Launching Google Maps Directions via an intent on Android

Question

My app needs to show Google Maps directions from A to B, but I don\'t want to put the Google Maps into my application - instead, I want to launch it using an Intent. Is this

Answer 1

Although the current answers are great, none of them did quite what I was looking for, I wanted to open the maps app only, add a name for each of the source location and destination, using the geo URI scheme wouldn't work for me at all and the maps web link didn't have labels so I came up with this solution, which is essentially an amalgamation of the other solutions and comments made here, hopefully it's helpful to others viewing this question.

String uri = String.format(Locale.ENGLISH, "http://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=%f,%f(%s)&daddr=%f,%f (%s)", sourceLatitude, sourceLongitude, "Home Sweet Home", destinationLatitude, destinationLongitude, "Where the party is at");
Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse(uri));
intent.setPackage("com.google.android.apps.maps");
startActivity(intent);

To use your current location as the starting point (unfortunately I haven't found a way to label the current location) then use the following

String uri = String.format(Locale.ENGLISH, "http://maps.google.com/maps?daddr=%f,%f (%s)", destinationLatitude, destinationLongitude, "Where the party is at");
Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse(uri));
intent.setPackage("com.google.android.apps.maps");
startActivity(intent);

For completeness, if the user doesn't have the maps app installed then it's going to be a good idea to catch the ActivityNotFoundException, then we can start the activity again without the maps app restriction, we can be pretty sure that we will never get to the Toast at the end since an internet browser is a valid application to launch this url scheme too.

        String uri = String.format(Locale.ENGLISH, "http://maps.google.com/maps?daddr=%f,%f (%s)", 12f, 2f, "Where the party is at");
        Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse(uri));
        intent.setPackage("com.google.android.apps.maps");
        try
        {
            startActivity(intent);
        }
        catch(ActivityNotFoundException ex)
        {
            try
            {
                Intent unrestrictedIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse(uri));
                startActivity(unrestrictedIntent);
            }
            catch(ActivityNotFoundException innerEx)
            {
                Toast.makeText(this, "Please install a maps application", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
            }
        }

P.S. Any latitudes or longitudes used in my example are not representative of my location, any likeness to a true location is pure coincidence, aka I'm not from Africa :P

EDIT:

For directions, a navigation intent is now supported with google.navigation

Uri navigationIntentUri = Uri.parse("google.navigation:q=" + 12f +"," + 2f);//creating intent with latlng
Intent mapIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, navigationIntentUri);
mapIntent.setPackage("com.google.android.apps.maps");
startActivity(mapIntent);